[...]
NIKHIL GUPTA: My father is a physicist, so I was always
inspired towards the wonders and beauty of physics and he always
tried to invent new puzzles and new games for me that were based
on concepts of physics so that just kept me pushing towards
engineering or science in general.
Yeah, among all the advice that I received over the years from
my mentors, I think the best one I would select is not to believe
my eyes all the time. Many times we see things that don't
turn out to be true when we do close investigation. In science
it's extremely important to conclusively know what
these things are.
My first experience with science or technology was an attempt to
repair a clock. It didn't work out the way I anticipated but at
least I got excited about what I could have done if the clock was
repaired. [Did you break it?] Yeah, I just broke it, it didn't
survive. [Was it broken before or you just took it apart?]
Well, it was working, it just stopped working one fine day, so
I just opened it completely and pulled apart every spring and
gear that was inside.
In learning new things, discovering new phenomenon,
these are the favorite things. To understand what we don't
understand right now it gives me a great deal of excitement about
science and technology and that's what gets me going.
I think the most important characteristic is to observe and
then try to learn from that. For example, if nobody
understood why cars are so heavy, nobody would be trying to
make them lighter. If they cut down the fuel consumption by
making the cars lighter, that means we are also helping the
environment. So there are a lot of things around us which are
problems that could be solved or they are not problems but life
could be made better and the burden on the earth would be
reduced, so these are the things we should be focused on.
Lightweight cars, for example, they could cut down the fuel
consumption that's only one part, but then the reduced
emission from lightweight cars can also help the environment.
That's another important benefit of that. And if we talk about
lightweight armors which our soldiers may be using then they
could be using more load carrying capacities so
their missions can be longer, so some of these benefits
can be reality.
Einstein, Tesla and Edison, people like them they were great
scientists and also inventors, so they had great influence on
my thinking. Tesla and Edison they focused on inventing new
things and making people's life better. On the other hand
Einstein was a scientist. He was working more on the basic
physics, but on the side he was also working on the societal
aspect and also the political aspect of science to make it
more attractive for people. So that, I think is what we need to
do at some point of time.
In my work sometimes it surprises people to know that I
am engineer but I'm also working on the bio related problems.
For example, I'm trying to understand how bones break under
car accident or bomb blast kind of conditions. I don't have
formal training in medicine but I'm working with people who have
formal training in medicine and we are collaborating to solve
these kinds of problems and understand how bones break, and
how doctors can help patients who have these kinds of
injuries. So sometimes this is very surprising for people.
In these days it has to be a laptop that needs to be saved
from burning office. All the data is on the laptop, the
figures, the drawings, the models that we create, the
calculations that we do. Everything is on laptop these
days, so if I could save that, that'll probably save half of my
stuff that's in the office.
I most often play Indian classical music, instrumental
and also vocal, so classical instrumental music, instruments
like Sitar or Sarod. So they are among my favorites.